Does anyone know of a website that calculates pounds to dollars based on time periods? For example how much would 200 pounds be in Tudor England? What would that calculate out to in today's world? Anyone?

http://eh.net/hmit/_________________"The White House isn't the place to learn how to deal with international crisis, the balance of power, war and peace, the economic future of the next generation." --- Joe Biden, 1988

You can get some huge variations depending on the method used, though. I did 200 pounds in 1558 (year of Elizabeth I's accession) and got about £50,000 using the retail price index and about £500,000 using average earnings.

The site has a guide to choosing the best method, considering what you want to know. I quote a little bit below:

Quote:

If you're are asking about the "present worth" of buying a loaf of bread or filling the gas tank 40 years ago, are you thinking in terms of the amount of money you are spending today on such things? If so, use the price index of the average household called the CPI (RPI for the UK.) On the other hand, if you are wondering how "affordable" this would be to the average person, use the (...) average earnings index.

In 1968, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the US was 34 cents. Compared to other things that the average consumer bought that year, this would be comparable to $2.03 using the CPI index for 2007. As to how "affordable" it is to the average person, 34 cents in 1968 would correspond to spending $3.44 out of an average income by using the GDP per capita index.

And then to calculate these current pounds into dollars, there's plenty of websites, but the absolutely easiest way (which I discovered only recently) is to enter "X pounds in dollars" into google, and google itself will calculate it based on the current exchange rate. The result will be above the result links._________________My Reading Journal
http://rosario.blogspot.com

You can get some huge variations depending on the method used, though. I did 200 pounds in 1558 (year of Elizabeth I's accession) and got about £50,000 using the retail price index and about £500,000 using average earnings.

I stumbled on that site when I was reading Judith James 'The Broken Wing' and wanted to know how much £10,000 was in today's money. One calculation gave it as about half a million pounds, the other as about eight million.

With that particular book, it'd be useful if the reader had some idea - the heroine's family has agreed to pay the hero £10,000, but he wants to be able to support his wife so decides to become a privateer.
Without having an idea how much £10,000 was, it's hard to know how barking mad his plan is.